How Learning Context Shapes Heritage and Second Language Acquisition

Language learning

Language learning

This study investigates knowledge of gender agreement in Spanish L2 learners and heritage speakers, who differ in age and context/mode of acquisition. On some current theoretical accounts, persistent difficulty with grammatical gender in adult L2 acquisition is due to age. These accounts predict that heritage speakers should be more accurate on gender agreement than L2 learners, because their Spanish language acquisition started in infancy. Sixty‐nine heritage speakers, 72 second language (L2) learners, and 22 native Spanish speakers were tested on their oral production, written comprehension, and written recognition of Spanish gender agreement. Results showed advantages for L2 learners in written tasks but advantages for heritage speakers in the oral task. We discuss the significance of these findings for SLA and heritage language acquisition.

Language learning

Reviewed by: Second language acquisition by Roumyana Slabakova Tania Ionin Second language acquisition. By Roumyana Slabakova. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xxi, 483. ISBN 9780199687275. $40. Introduction This book is a textbook of second language acquisition (SLA) written within the theoretical framework of the generative approach to SLA research. The intended readers are advanced undergraduate students and graduate students who have some background in linguistics, in particular in syntax and semantics. The text is intended first and foremost for students with a prior background in generative linguistics. While the main linguistic concepts are explained when they are introduced, such explanations are necessarily brief, and students with no prior background in linguistics would find the more technical parts of the text somewhat difficult to follow. However, students or other readers who have a general interest in language and/or language acquisition, but lack a background in generative linguistics, should still be able to follow the main concepts presented in the book. This textbook is quite unique in that, while its focus is on theoretical research on SLA, it explicitly makes the link to potential pedagogical relevance of the research findings. Brief summary The book consists of thirteen chapters, divided into three parts. Each chapter ends with a section of exercises; at the end of the book are a glossary, references, and an index. Part I, ‘Language’, provides a brief overview of the relevant background information that readers need to have in order to fully appreciate the rest of the book. Ch. 1, ‘Language architecture’, lays out the central argument of generative linguistics for the innateness of language and introduces the reader to several famous proposals on the structure of the language faculty. Ch. 1 then addresses the task faced by a second language learner and lays out the logic of the methodology used in generative SLA research. Ch. 2, ‘Language variation’, walks the reader through the history of the generative study of language variation, from principles and parameters through the minimalist program. Like Ch. 1, Ch. 2 ends by considering the implications of the theoretical linguistic research for the learning task of a second language learner. The goal of Ch. 3, ‘The psychological reality of language in use’, is to prepare the reader for later chapters that address second language processing by reviewing the central models and findings of the literature on language processing and psycholinguistics more generally. Part II, ‘Language acquisition’, has the goal of placing the study of SLA into the study of language acquisition as a whole by considering a number of different language-acquisition scenarios. The focus of this part is on the respective contributions of age of acquisition and of input quantity and quality to the task of language acquisition. Ch. 4, ‘The critical period hypothesis’, goes over the history of critical period studies and addresses the debate about the existence of critical or sensitive periods in SLA. This chapter also considers the role of input, bringing together a number of quite distinct phenomena, including variable input, comparisons between heritage speakers and second language learners, and variability among native speakers at different educational levels. Ch. 5, ‘First language acquisition, two first languages’, provides an overview of the process of first language acquisition; most of the chapter is devoted to monolingual first language acquisition, but the last section discusses simultaneous bilinguals, who form a natural link between monolinguals and adult second language learners. In Ch. 6, ‘Child second language, multilingual and heritage language acquisition, language attrition’, a variety of other types of language acquisition scenarios are discussed. Throughout this chapter, and especially in the last section, the focus is, once again, on the relative contributions of age of acquisition and input quantity and quality to the outcome of the language acquisition process. The position taken in this chapter, and [End Page e198] throughout the rest of the book, is that the effects of age can potentially be overridden by rich input, and that universal grammar remains active in SLA by adults. Part III, ‘Second language acquisition’, is the heart of the book. In addition to providing an overview of SLA research in the core areas of linguistics (with the one exception of...

Much research has been conducted on learning English as an additional language both in the United States and around the world. However, there have been fewer studies focusing on heritage language learners (HLLs) who have already acquired English as their native tongue and are learning their heritage language as an L2, or second language (Joo, 2009). The rapidly growing number of language minority individuals who have turned their attention towards learning their heritage languages have led both secondary schools and universities to restructure their foreign language classes in order to better address the needs of HLLs (Jensen & Llosa, 2007). Who exactly are HLLs, and what defines them as such? What makes HLLs different from L2 learners? This paper will take a sociolinguistic and socio-psychological perspective on HLLs, with a particular focus on Korean Americans in the United States. How do attitude, motivation, and identity play a role in heritage language acquisition among Korean American learners? Do these socio-psychological factors affect one another in the learning process? What are the pedagogical implications for teachers and students?

<p>This dissertation is composed of a quantitative investigation of Incomplete Heritage Language Acquisition and Attrition in heritage speakers’ vocabulary knowledge. This portion is followed by a qualitative investigation of Heritage Language Acquisition and Maintenance in which the immigrant parents’ attitudes towards heritage language acquisition and maintenance for their children are explored. Three groups of participants took part in this study. One group consisted of thirty 6-18 year old Persian-English simultaneous and sequential bilinguals in New Zealand. To obtain benchmark data, a control group was recruited, comprised of thirty monolingual speakers of Persian in Iran who were matched with the heritage speakers in terms of age, gender, number of siblings and their family’s socio-economic status. The third group of the participants consisted of twenty-four parents of the heritage speakers. Information about the bilinguals’ demographic and socio-linguistic factors was collected through semi-structured interviews with their parents. The quantitative investigation commences with a study that examines young heritage speakers’, either simultaneous or sequential bilinguals, vocabulary knowledge in their family language compared to the matched monolingual counterparts, and the factors that account for a difference, if there is any, are investigated. These factors include current age, age at emigration, length of emigration, frequency of heritage language use and parents’ attitude towards heritage language acquisition and maintenance. The results of productive and receptive vocabulary knowledge tests showed that the heritage speakers were outperformed by the monolinguals, but the gap was wider in the case of the simultaneous bilinguals. Additionally, the parents’ attitude was found to be a strong predictor of the simultaneous bilinguals’ vocabulary knowledge, while the sequential bilinguals’ vocabulary knowledge was associated mostly with age at emigration. The second study in the quantitative investigation examines whether the simultaneous and sequential bilinguals differ from monolinguals with regard to lexical richness, according to measures of lexical diversity and lexical sophistication, in their family language. It also weighs the influence of the demographic and/or sociolinguistic factors on the difference between these sub-groups, if there is any. A film-retelling task was used to collect free speech samples. As expected, the monolinguals’ narratives tended to manifest greater lexical richness according to both measures, but did most markedly so according to the lexical sophistication measure, suggesting that the latter is a better parameter in detecting the differences between heritage speakers and monolinguals. Of the factors investigated, the simultaneous and sequential bilinguals’ lexical richness was predicted by age, showing that the older the children were when they moved to the second language environment, the better their family language vocabulary tended to be. The sociolinguistic variables (i.e. Persian use and parental attitude) were not found to play a significant role in the results of the two quantitative studies. This might have been due to the fact that the demographic variables (i.e. age and age at emigration) were so strong that they overrode the influence of the sociolinguistic variables. Alternatively, the Likert-scale items used in the questionnaire-based interview may have been too blunt an instrument to discern subtle and yet relevant sociolinguistic differences among families. This raised a need to conduct a qualitative investigation in case a more in-depth analysis of the interview data might reveal a clearer picture of their influence. The qualitative portion of this dissertation begins with an exploration of the immigrant parents’ attitudes towards their children’s development and maintenance of their heritage language by utilizing Spolsky’s (2004) model of language policy as a methodological framework. The data consist of the same semi-structured interviews with twenty-four parents of the heritage speakers as used in the quantitative investigation. The findings reveal that although the parents hold positive beliefs about family language acquisition and maintenance, there are discrepancies between their language ideologies and family language practices and efforts. In light of these inconsistencies, this study suggests that analyses of parental language attitudes towards heritage language maintenance should not only consider their beliefs towards minority language acquisition and maintenance, but also their language practices and management. It was also found that the majority of Iranian parents in this study were satisfied if their children had good conversational skills in Persian. This finding led me to look into the parents’ attitudes towards their children’s acquisition and maintenance of Persian literacy. Following the first part of this investigation, the parents’ beliefs, practices and management strategies were explored to see how they reflect their attitudes towards their children’s heritage language literacy acquisition and maintenance. The findings revealed that it was very uncommon for the heritage speakers to have high literacy skills, which the parents attributed largely to the lack of community-based heritage language schools in the host country. Furthermore, parents’ efforts in heritage language literacy development and maintenance can be explained through the concept of investment (Norton, 2000). It seems that the parents choose not to promote investment in heritage language literacy, when they do not see it as a part of their children’s imagined identities. Additionally, while conversational fluency and cultural knowledge were continuously positioned as being extremely important for the heritage language speaking children by the parents, it was not seen as connected to traditional literacy. Investigating the different aspects of heritage speakers’ lexical knowledge, the quantitative portion of this dissertation furthers our understanding of incomplete acquisition and attrition of family languages in simultaneous and sequential bilinguals. Additionally, the qualitative portion illustrates that positive parental beliefs do not guarantee heritage language acquisition and maintenance. This investigation also raised immigrant parents’ awareness of the role literacy can also play in heritage language maintenance. Taken together, this dissertation draws the attention of researchers, educators, immigrant parents and communities to various social and linguistic aspects of young heritage speakers’ acquisition and maintenance of their family language as they grow up.</p>

Language learning

This paper analyzes simultaneous and successive second language learning in the context of human development and schooling. The author defines important terms for the analysis before comparing acquisition of a second language to planned school learning of a second language after the mother tongue is acquired. Drawing from sociolinguistic perspective, human development, school learning and language policy, the author discusses conflicting claims about second language learning in the school context. Some fundamental questions are raised about second language learning, to which the author attempts to develop answers. She highlights the role of language policy in successive second language learning, the need for learning school content within its linguistic and cultural context, and the importance of examining the learned content within one's own cultural circumstances. The author differentiates between cultural content within the micro cultures of specific groups and school content learned within the global macro culture of schooling. The author draws some implications for second language learning, stressing that a second language is learned out of necessity in the human development process. Concluding remarks highlight the importance of ensuring that learners have access to the languages they need to experience and monitor their human development processes in rewarding ways.

Recently the issue of having recourse to second language (L2) learners’ first language (L1) in second language acquisition (SLA) is receiving a great amount of attention in SLA research. There has been a great deal of claims and counter-claims with respect to L1 use in L2 learning. The findings of L2 research to date cast doubt on the rationales of proponents of exclusive use of L2. Researchers and practitioners who have observed L2 classrooms have identified different functions of L1 in L2 learning. Drawing on previous research as a framework, the present study investigates teachers’ beliefs and perceptions about L1 use in English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) learning contexts. To this end, seventy-two L2 teachers volunteered to fill in a questionnaire which probed into their beliefs and perceptions about employing learners’ L1 (Persian) in L2 (English) learning. The data obtained revealed that the L2 teachers used L1 mainly to provide feedback, teach new vocabulary, explain grammar, build rapport, manage the class, give individual help to learners, and save time in lengthy task explanations. However, in contrast to the L2 studies to date in this field, the teachers expressed that they never fall back on learners’ L1 to explain instructions for assignments or projects. The findings might have significant implications for language teachers, in particular in EFL contexts, regarding the facilitative effects of L1 use on L2 learning. The pedagogical implications of the study are explained in detail.

Language learning

05–135 Armstrong, Kevin (Leicester U, UK; ka50@le.ac.uk ), Sexing up the dossier: a semantic analysis of phrasal verbs for language teachers . Language Awareness (Clevedon, UK) 13 .4 (2004), 213–224. 05–136 Baker, William & Boonkit, Kamonpan (Silpakorn U, Thailand; willmlbaker@yahoo.co.uk ), Learning strategies in reading and writing: EAP contexts . RELC Journal (Thousand Oaks, CA, USA) 35 .3 (2004), 299–328. 05–137 Bell, N. (Indiana U of Pennsylvania, USA), Exploring L2 language play as an aid to SLL: a case study of humour in NS–NNS interaction . Applied Linguistics (Oxford, UK) 26 .2 (2005), 192–218. 05–138 Bohn, Mariko T . (Stanford U, USA; mbohn@stanford.edu ), Japanese classroom behavior: a micro-analysis of self-reports versus classroom observations – with implications for language teachers . Applied Language Learning (Monterey, CA, USA) 14 .1 (2004), 1–35. 05–139 Bryan, S. 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Language learning

Learning for All:Addressing Issues of Access and Participation in Mixed Classes María M. Carreira Keywords disciplinary literacy/alfabetisimo disciplinario, heritage language learners/estudiantes del idioma patrimonio, mixed classes/clases mixtas, reciprocal learning/aprendizaje recíproco Response 1 to "Meeting Student Needs: Integrating Spanish Heritage Language Learners into the Second Language Classroom" Mixed classes are the most common instructional context in which heritage language (HL) learners study Spanish. From a teaching standpoint, they are also the most challenging due to the considerable differences that exist between HL and second language (L2) learners and the scarcity of pedagogical tools for addressing these differences. Many L2 textbooks include HL annotations, but this is not enough. Specialized textbooks and methodologies are needed. The suggestions offered by Burgo speak to two general strategies that should guide instruction and the design of pedagogical materials: 1) leveraging the complementary strengths of HL and L2 learners for reciprocal learning; and 2) addressing differences between learners that undercut teaching and learning (Carreira 2016). In terms of complementary strengths, HL learners have strong aural skills and implicit knowledge of grammar, as well as familiarity with informal registers. Second language learners have strong writing skills and explicit knowledge of grammar, and they are most familiar with formal registers. In mixed classes, this situation can translate into two very different scenarios: it can create valuable reciprocal learning opportunities or it can get in the way of teaching and learning. The difference between these two scenarios comes down to how instructors deal with the special needs and knowledge gaps of their students. By way of illustration, it is useful to compare the conversational performance and disciplinary literacy of HL and L2 learners. Relative to HL learners, L2 learners have special needs in the area of conversational performance, particularly with spontaneous, informal language. Disciplinary literacy refers to the knowledge base, background experiences, and skills associated with a given discipline (Moje 2008). With foreign languages, this includes knowledge of grammatical terminology and concepts, as well as familiarity with classroom routines and common pedagogical interventions. Heritage language learners have less disciplinary literacy than L2 learners because they usually enter the language learning sequence somewhere beyond the first semester of study, by which time L2 learners have developed this type of knowledge (Carreira 2016). Crucially, gaps in disciplinary literacy put HL learners at a disadvantage compared to L2 learners. To this point, Torres's (2013) study of a task-based pedagogical intervention found that L2 learners were better than HL learners at recognizing the intended purpose of the task, which in the case of this particular study was learning the subjunctive. Treating this task as an authentic situation, HL learners were not focused on its purpose. [End Page 51] As Burgo explains, limitations such as these can create feelings of insecurity in both types of learners and interfere with the establishment of meaningful class relationships. They can also undermine learning by preventing L2 learners from engaging in communicative activities and rendering grammar instruction inaccessible to HL learners. Countering these outcomes involves equipping each learner with the knowledge and skills they need to fully participate in and derive benefit from instruction. For L2 learners, it entails previewing and practicing the language concepts that will be required to participate in communicative activities with HL learners. For HL learners, it involves preparing them to follow grammar explanations in order to benefit from form-focused activities. These kinds of interventions are best addressed in homogeneous (HL-only and L2-only) groups and should be conceived of as creating the conditions for reciprocal learning and addressing issues that undercut learning for each type of learner. As a final point, staying focused on the big ideas behind instruction is always important, but it is all the more so in mixed classes, where the day-to-day challenges can loom large. Big ideas answer essential questions such as: Why exactly are we teaching this? What do we want our students to understand and be able to do five years from now? (Tomlinson and McTighe 2006: 32). Orienting instruction around the big ideas extends the horizon of learning beyond any instructional unit or course and directs the gaze to promoting long-term learning...

Reviewed by: The lexicon-syntax interface in second language acquisition ed. by Roeland van Hout, Aafke Hulk, Folkert Kuiken, and Richard J. Towell Liang Chen The lexicon-syntax interface in second language acquisition. Ed. by Roeland van Hout, Aafke Hulk, Folkert Kuiken, and Richard J. Towell. (Language acquisition and language disorders 30.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003. Pp. vi, 232. ISBN 158811418X. $119 (Hb). This volume contains ten papers, including introductory and concluding chapters by the editors. These papers were presented at ‘The interface between syntax and the lexicon in second language acquisition’ seminar organized by the editors and held in Amsterdam in 2001. Richard Towell (1–20) first outlines the linguistic and psychological perspectives of second language acquisition (SLA) as a context against which the eight papers are then briefly introduced and evaluated. The complementary nature of such different perspectives of SLA research is highlighted. Roger Hawkins and Sara Liszka (21–44) attribute errors in tense marking made by Chinese speakers of English in their spontaneous oral production (e.g. The police CAUGHT the man and TAKE him away.) to the difficulty in assigning the formal feature [past] to the category T(ense), as such a feature is not selected in their first language (L1). Norbert Corver (45–68) analyzes second language (L2) expressions produced by Turkish L2 learners of Dutch within a minimalist interface perspective and argues that ‘L2-expressions are perfect grammatical objects, where perfection amounts to legibility of its information to the systems with which it interacts’ (66). Ineke van de Craats (69–96) uses longitudinal data of eight adults with Turkish and Moroccan Arabic L1 backgrounds learning Dutch as an L2 to explore how the grammatical knowledge of an L2 learner is encoded in the lexicon. It is argued that while these L2 learners are more aware of crosslinguistic differences in morphological and lexical properties of words, they originally assume the L1 formal feature constellation, which gradually changes in favor of the L2 ones. Nigel Duffield (97–128) proposes a dual model of competence to account for both the categorical aspects and the various types of lexical and syntactic gradient effects of our implicit grammatical knowledge. Ton Dijkstra (129–50) reviews available literature on the lexical storage and retrieval in bilinguals, which suggests (i) a largely automatic bilingual word identification system, (ii) the slower activation of L2 than L1, depending on relative L1/L2 proficiency, and (iii) the potential influence of experimental and contextual factors on patterns observed in experiments. John N. Williams (151–74) focuses on the similarities and differences between human and connectionist learning of noun classes. In particular, it is argued that while an arbitrary noun class system with masculine and feminine genders is learnable both by humans and by connectionist networks (via distributional information), gender is a persistent problem in SLA as well as in connectionist learning. Laura Sabourin and Marco Haverkort (175–96) show that differences in linguistic processing are quantitative between aphasic speakers and normative speakers, but are qualitative between native speakers and second language learners. David W. Green (197–218) reviews current research on the representation and processing of lexicon and grammar in L2 and claims that they ‘marginally favor the convergence hypothesis’, that is, ‘as proficiency in L2 increases, the networks mediating L2 converge with those mediating language use in native speakers of that language’ (212), rather than the differential representation hypothesis (i.e. an L2 learner’s representation and processing of the lexical and grammatical knowledge of the target language differ from that of a native speaker of that language). Roeland van Hout, Aafke Hulk, and Folkert Kuiken (219–26) highlight the lexicon as the driving force of language acquisition in their concluding remarks. They suggest that varieties in methodology, learners and languages, linguistic domains, contexts and tasks, and perspectives all need to be considered in order to address more fully the issues in second language acquisition examined in this volume and beyond. This work represents the latest developments in the generative/psycholinguistic studies of second language acquisition. It will certainly advance our understanding of this important...